(update 4/30/2007) Benny Hinn used legal force to remove the video embedded here from YouTube. The video only had about a second of him in the footage. He does not want you to see the truth. Read how Benny Hinn is hiding the truth here.

I often speak about a lot of fake mess going on in churches, simply because I’ve seen so much of it. And I’ve seen so many good hearted people be used and abused by practitioners of trickery in the church. One of the biggest tricks used is something called being “slain in the spirit”. If you’ve seen someone like Benny Hinn supposedly knocking people to the floor with what is claimed to be the power of God, you’ve seen the shenanigans in action. Now, while we can readily accept that Benny Hinn is no good, what about the people who are falling out? Surely they are not all bad people. In fact, probably none of them except maybe the folks working for Hinn are “bad” people. So what would cause them to fall on their backs and basically follow what seems to be Hinn’s every suggestion? They are good people who opened themselves up to a con man who is mentally manipulating them, literally. No where in the Bible do you see people falling on their backs from this supposed “slain in the spirit” phenomenon. But con men attempt to play as if the Holy Spirit will cause most anything they can dream up in their imaginations. The “slain in the spirit” claim is something that has been played on for at least decades. In the Bible, Ananias and his wife Sapphira were what I consider to be truly “slain in the spirit”, or maybe I should just say slain by the spirit. (See Acts 5:1-11)

Personally, I think people who engage in this, such as Eddie Long enjoy seeing people fall back when they touch them. I think it gives them a real power trip. Long claims that people falling back are “submitting” to the will of God when he touches them. So often, people fall backwards upon Long’s touch, simply because it is the instructed thing to do. Sometimes, if someone does not go down, he’ll keep touching them until they do go down. In the Bible there are cases of people willfully falling on their face in reverence of God, but they were not facing a teacher of false doctrine and falling on their backs.

I found an interesting video, that helps to demonstrate how the “slain in the spirit” game is played.

I guess personally, I never opened my mind to be abused by this form of trickery. Because although I’ve attended plenty of places in the past where it was a regular thing, I never found myself passed out on my back. Even on the occasions that I went up to allow one of those gamesters to touch me, I’d be one of the folks who simply walked away afterwards back to my seat. The “slain in the spirit” mess is simply a casual form of hypnotic suggestion, sometimes performed in single file or mass application.

Here is an excellent write-up that goes into further detail about the “slain in the spirit” mess.